


And I Will Follow

by Rinnagirl



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Chillin on Ahch-To, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fix-It, For your hurting post-tros soul, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, Mostly canon compliant up until Rey goes to Ahch-To, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey needs a break, Rey probably needs one too, Reylo - Freeform, Save Ben Solo, Soulmates, Spoilers, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, TRoS Spoilers, ben needs a hug, damn someone rec me to galacticidiots, my son deserved better, she's the QUEEN of reylo fic recs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22040071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinnagirl/pseuds/Rinnagirl
Summary: "He could see now that Rey had, even for the briefest moment, desired to put aside the right thing, the good thing, the heroic thing in favor of the one thing she wanted most. The one thing Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren, had to give. And the guilt was eating her alive."Fresh off the major decision to abandon the dark side, Ben Solo follows an overwhelmed and wildly conflicted Rey to Ahch-To after their battle on the wreckage of the Death Star. Thankfully, Ben Solo knows a thing or two about internal conflict.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 20
Kudos: 103
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	1. Boil in my Veins

She’s screaming. A visceral, yet empty sound, a punch at the air with no strength behind it.

Kylo Ren’s TIE fighter _Silencer_ smolders before her in a twisted heap of melted metal and steaming rain-licked flames.

She has already flung every small rock or pebble within her reach, her hands now resorting to ripping great fistfuls of wet grass and dirt from the ground around her and flinging them at the smoking TIE, each clump punctuating another frustrated yell.

She is soaked through, and would be freezing if she could feel _anything_ but the consuming _tearing_ inside her, the feeling of her own soul being tugged and shredded by great fingers---old, shriveled, claw-like---scraping in time with the pounding of her heart against her ribcage trying to break her very bones. Her blood is boiling and raging, fire in her veins burning her from the inside out. Her throat is worn raw from screaming, trying to force the fire out through her mouth, her breathing now coming in ragged gasps and sobs. Her muddy fingers jerk to her hip, grasping the cold metal of the lightsaber’s hilt. She glares at it. _I’m not your hero._

Her dirty fingernails scrape along the casing. No one wants _her_ , no one cares about _Rey from Nowhere._ The Jedi, the Resistance, all of them. They just wanted a _hero_ , a vessel for their _hope_. _But that isn’t me._ They all must have thought it all so prodigious, finding a desert scavenger, a no one so empty and ready for them to fill with all of their problems, their expectations, their _hope_. But they didn’t realize that she had her own soul, one that was now forced to the furthest corner of her being, trapped and ignored. _Alone._

The loneliness of the desert was nothing to this feeling. She knew why Kylo Ren’s saber raged and flickered so wildly. He felt like this _all the time_ , conflicted, abandoned, _lost_. It was a desperate feeling, an isolating force. She understood his explosive anger. How could anyone keep such pain inside indefinitely. _They couldn’t. She couldn’t._

She winds her arm back ready to fling the saber into the heart of the fire, but a tug in her gut, a steadying hand reaching through the Force, freezes her on the edge of motion. His voice brushes through her mind before the sound of it reaches her ears.

“Wait.”

She wants to be angry, even angrier than she is now, something that feels quite impossible. She wants to turn all her anger back against him and lash him with it, striking over and over until he leaves her _alone_. Because everything is _too much._ She wants to scream at him to go away, to kill her, to...to... _do something_. Something to make it all _just_ _stop_.

But she doesn’t speak. Doesn’t strike. Doesn’t run. Doesn’t move.

Rey can feel him approaching, his heavy boots sinking into the muddy Ahch-To soil. She doesn’t bother asking how he found her. She had stolen _his_ TIE to get here so she wouldn’t be surprised if it had a tracker of some sort. But beyond that, he always seemed to find her, despite his claim that she was hard to track down. It was irritating and inconvenient and right now, strangely comforting.

He stops a few feet behind her. She wants to hide her red eyes and tear stains. She wonders if he heard her screaming. She knows he must have. She wants to be embarrassed, humiliated even. But there is nothing. His presence has burned out the fire of her conflict for the moment. She feels empty, drained. _Nothing, you’re nothing_. And she thinks for a moment that maybe it is better to be nothing.

_But not to me._

Rey doesn’t turn to face him, she doesn’t appear to have heard his whisper through the bond. She is too lost in her own conflict. The gravity of her pain tugs downward and she sinks to her knees. Mud stains her leggings, seeping through to join the chilly rain percolating against her skin. Her hands, still clutching Anakin’s saber, fall to her lap.

* * *

He can feel every emotion in her, each one a shard of glass, shrapnel embedded in her bones, her mind, her spirit. The sorrow and confusion, the frustration, the anger--- all of it radiates off of her in waves, an overwhelming tide pressing against Ben’s mind through their bond.

He is glad she has not tried to attack him yet. With his saber now at the bottom of the sea he doesn’t foresee a duel with an emotionally compromised, lightsaber wielding Jedi playing out in his favor. Yet it is disconcerting, seeing her like this. He knows Rey does not belong on her knees before anyone, him least of all .

He can see her shoulders shaking, from cold or tears he does not know, but neither are promising options. Ben’s fists open and close at his sides, fingers rubbing together as he wrestles with the strange, not entirely unwelcome, desire to reach out to her.

* * *

She feels him move away from her, walking off towards the TIE he’d used to follow her. Her limbs are too heavy, and the pain pulses again, still hot in her veins, chaining her to the ground. She doesn’t even flinch when he approaches again. He stands barely two strides behind, looming over her. A mountain over a tree. She wonders if he might kill her. Her mind lingers on the question of whether or not she would stop him if he tried. She feels him tense, both physically and internally, as this thought flows across the bond to him.

He had not attacked her on the wreckage of the Death Star; not one of his moves during their duel was an offensive strike. He’d executed only the necessary blocks and parries to keep her raging strikes from slicing him through. He hadn’t _wanted_ to fight her. Something she can feel him emphasize with a light brush against her memory now. It is an odd thought, but then perhaps not. He _had_ asked her to join him. To be his ally. To be his...something.

She knows they both felt the loss of Leia through the Force in that moment on the wreckage. Their grief mingles together in the bond now, as it had in the moments after the initial shock. Rey had regretted striking him; she had run him through with his own saber while he was distracted. It was wrong. It wasn’t her way. She had felt wrong for the entirety of the fight, like someone was inside her body twisting her limbs on marionette strings. She had been striking blind, unconcerned with who or what was on the receiving end, like a wild animal lashing out in pain. But the clear voice of Leia whispering her son’s name had cut away the haze of rage, severing the puppet strings inside her, freeing her of the dark influence. But in the aftermath Rey was left soaked and drained, empty and ashamed, her hand on the hilt of the saber that had burned a hole through Leia’s son’s chest and a matching one through her soul.

Anyone else would have died instantly from such a wound. But a fragile thread of life had held him there and Rey had known it must be Leia. And she had never been more grateful. She recalls, again, his face in that moment. He’d looked so lost, so innocent. Just a child who had lost his mother, the same face she had worn watching her parents fly away all those years ago. She could see the ghost of another emotion in his eyes in that moment, even when he wasn’t looking at her. _Betrayal, hurt._ The same look from the throne room when she had reached for the lightsaber instead of his hand.

The moment she saw his wound, her remaining defenses had crumbled. If she was cracking before, she shattered then. There was no strength left in her to put up walls, to keep him from reading her every thought, her every feeling. Even now she knew he could feel her exhaustion, her conflict, her rage, her grief, her fear, all of it as he could then. Healing him drained her further than she thought possible; she was still unsure how she had managed to stay conscious long enough to reach Ahch-To at all.

The next memory has its own gravity, pressing her so hard into the ground that she has to brace her hands in the mud to keep from falling forward; the lightsaber slips into the grass and rolls away as she recalls how her traitorous mouth had given him the last thing that was hers and hers alone. The last secret she had kept behind her thickest walls.

 _“I did want to take your hand_... _Ben’s hand._ ”

And there it was. The truth.

It was right, _noble_ even, to want to save him, to want to retrieve him from the grasp of the dark side and return him triumphantly to the light. But it was also a lie.

Somewhere along the way her motivations had changed. She no longer cared what side he was on. She no longer cared what side _she_ was on. She knew only that she wanted them to be on the same one. And if that meant going to his side instead of bringing him to hers, there was a part of her that felt that would be just as good. But she had known it was wrong. Wrong to want that. Wrong to be content with such a choice. Yet, even the final straw that kept her from taking his hand was a selfish one. She’d sensed his instability, known that the life he was offering would be the death of them both. Known she would lose the flash of Ben Solo she had finally found to Kylo Ren and then she would be lost along with him. _No_. That was _Kylo Ren’s_ offer behind Ben’s hand. She would not go along and watch anyone, including Kylo Ren, take Ben from her.

She had been startled, afraid of the sudden possessiveness with which she had regarded Ben Solo in that moment. She didn’t want him to belong to the dark side, not because it was evil or wrong, but because she wanted him to belong to _her. With her._

Unable to stay and face his reaction to the truth her of selfishness alongside everything else warring inside her, she’d fled. Both in the throne room and on the Death Star she had run away.

And he had followed.

* * *

Now Ben stands no more than two feet behind her. His presence cast over her, a shadow not reliant on sunlight. Her thoughts and emotions beat away at him, tidal waves against sea cliffs.

The grief of his mother’s loss still hangs around him, clinging to him like his soaked clothes. Her grief mingles with it. He pushes it away, allowing it to stand beside him, separate but not far off. He knows he can’t do anything to help either of them if he lets it hold him too tight.

He watches her thoughts play freely across her mind, the bond open, her will too weak to put up walls against him, just like on the wreckage. He senses the memory of her desire to go with him. He allows it to wash over him, a quiet warmth taking root in his bones.

She had _wanted_ to take his hand. _Wanted_ to join _him._

Power was the wrong thing to offer her; he knows it now. Rey didn’t want a galaxy. Rey wanted a home. Rey wanted someone to hold on to her and never let go. She wanted someone to come into her life and take root, grow strong, and stubbornly refuse to be dug up. He’d chosen the wrong angle. Chosen to appeal to her as a hero rather than a human. Yes, Rey was a hero, maybe even _his_ hero. But being a hero couldn’t fix loneliness. Real, marrow-deep, loneliness, the kind etched in muscle and bone, the kind that needed a lifetime of companionship and love to heal.

He gathers from her memories that the temptation of his offer had not been the power to be heroic, to influence, but rather to be by someone’s side. To have someone be by _her_ side. To take a hand, not as a contract of power, but as a gesture of connectedness, of comfort.

He can see now that Rey had, even for the briefest moment, desired to put aside the _right thing, the good thing, the heroic thing_ in favor of the one thing she wanted _most_. The one thing Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren, had to give. And the guilt was eating her alive.

The guilt of a hero who stopped caring about being one when offered her greatest wish. She had wanted to go with him, light or dark it had not mattered---a thought that caught his breath up and tied almost _giddy_ knots in his stomach. He had once told her she was not alone, and she had believed him. Trusted him, even, to be someone who would not allow her to feel alone. And the temptation of never feeling alone again had _almost_ been enough to make her abandon the fight to bring him to the light.

He could tell that her admission of these things to him on the wreckage of the Death Star was no small thing. The shame attached to the memory, even now, is unmistakable. He finds, strangely, that this sparks the greatest hatred for the Resistance he has ever felt. They had placed her on a pedestal, hailed her as their hero, and added far more than the recommended dose of responsibility. They had put this pressure on her to always choose _good_ over herself. It made him think of Snoke, Palpatine, even _Hux._ With them there was always some greater cause, something more important than what he felt or wanted. He knew how she felt, probably more than anyone else.

_A dyad indeed._

She shivers again.

He steps closer, crouching behind her. He unfurls his cloak, retrieved from the TIE, at least a little drier than the both of them, and drapes it over her shoulders.

He feels her force signature flicker as he waves his hand, tipping her mind gently into unconsciousness. It doesn’t take much. He catches her by the shoulders as she tips forward, and draws her into his arms as he had in the woods after their first meeting. He extends his hand again, summoning his grandfather’s lightsaber and tucking it into his belt before rising from the mud with Rey in his arms.

With a gentle probing he extracts the location of the huts Luke once inhabited and sets off towards them. Smoke from the burning heap that was once his faithful TIE _Sliencer_ curls behind him, a faint echo of some dark voice floats with it. _The Wayfinder._ He will return for it once Rey is settled and warm. She is his priority right now.

He marches along, long strides carrying him across the muddy hills; he feels Rey’s stir. He pauses, adjusting her in his arms and tucking his cape around her more snugly.

Her hand comes to rest against his chest, just over his heart as it pounds behind his ribs, leaping towards her fingers. He forgets to breathe. But then the fitful expression twisting her features fades slightly, creases of worry smoothing away with each beat of his heart against her fingertips.

No one but the sea catches his smile.


	2. Whisper To My Soul

She knows the shadow in her doorway. Knows him by the wide, solid shoulders, the wild, windswept hair. She knows him by the humming in her blood.

It’s still raining; she can hear it beating against the stones of the hut. It’s harder than it was when she’d set fire to the TIE, hard enough that the blaze is likely gone to wet ash by now. There’s a quiet sense of vindication in remembering the burning TIE, something dark and private that feels good knowing she’s destroyed something, no matter how insignificant.

The air between them is tense, balanced on the fine edge of a silent blade. It’s his wariness and her suspicion, a cocktail of quiet and boiling anticipation. She can tell he’s been out in the storm by the way his dark hair is plastered to his forehead, black curls like smoke dripping rainwater into his eyes that he doesn’t bother to wipe away.

It’s the first chance she’s had to look at him since leaving him on the wreckage surrounded by a raging sea. He’s stripped to the bottom-most layer of clothes, a black undershirt and pants clasped against his skin by the slap of wind and rain. Gone are his gloves and his belt, and she notes with niggling curiosity that his saber is not clasped to his side. He looks younger, somehow, a boy hiding in a shadow.

When he finally moves, it is a creep, slow, placating, as if she is a wild animal ready to pounce and tear him apart. Maybe she is. But she doesn’t move.

One of his hands raises, palm open to show her he bears no weapon, means no harm. The other hand is occupied by a lumpy looking bundle that she can tell he’s gone through great pains to shield from the rain.

He waves it in her direction, a warning before he tosses it over the fire between them. It’s soft, damp from where the rain managed to lick at it around the shield of his body. Inside are the spare clothes he’s scavenged from Luke’s old hut.

His voice is quiet, almost apologetic. “They won’t fit well but it’s the best I could find. I know they’re a bit damp, but it’s drier than what you’ve got on now.” He inclines his head towards her robes, soaked and muddy under the blanket wrapped around her.

“I’ll give you a few moments.” He nods to her, almost politely and she opens her mouth before she can stop herself.

“Where is your cloak? It’s pouring.” She doesn’t mean for it to sound so gentle, so concerned.

His lips twist, an almost smile, He jerks his head towards her once more. Her blanket.

When she meets his eyes there is something there, something quiet, something secret. But his mind is guarded, walls in place to shield him from her searching eyes. He slips out the door before she can say anything and she is left alone with her bemused gratitude.

When he returns she is dressed in Luke’s old robes. A white tunic that hangs off her body, and a pair of loose brown pants, the ties knotted three times to keep them from slipping off. Luke wasn’t a particularly large man, but he liked to wear robes bigger than his fit and her lonely years on Jakku have left her lean and small. There are two other sets of spare tunics and pants left over as well as a pair of blankets and an oversized brown robe. 

He stands in the doorway again, unsure of his welcome, watching as she hangs his cloak across the back of a crude chair to dry. Finally he steps to the side of the door and leans against the wall, sliding down to the floor. A puddle of rainwater begins to form around him, dripping from his clothes, boots, and hair. She can see him shiver, though he tries to hide it.

“There’s another set of clothes in there. You’ll freeze like that.”

He searches her face, waiting for her to change her mind, but she doesn’t. Instead, she crosses the room to crouch before him, the dry clothes folded in her hands. She hadn’t meant to come so close. She clears her throat, stiffly dropping them into his hands, and moving away once more.

“No sense going out now that I’m dry and if you change out there you’ll only soak those too, so I can just turn around.” It’s logical, but her ears burn hot anyway. She can feel a thread of surprise wind through the bond, but moments later she hears him move. She fixes her eyes firmly on the wall, counting the cracks in the stone, and willing the heat away.

She hears one boot hit the ground, then the other. There is a rustle that she knows is him peeling off his soaked pants and the burn crawls from her ears down her neck, mind concentrated on erecting a wall so that he does not notice. The rustling quiets and she concludes he must be finished, turning around to face him again.

He looks startled. The pants like hers seem to fit him well enough, though they are a bit short on him, the hem landing higher up his leg, just under the swell of his calf. His feet are bare.

So is his chest.

He’s holding the tunic in his hands, bunching it up in preparation to pull it over his head. 

“Oh!” She lets out a soft noise of surprise and moves to spin back around. “I’m sorry...”

“No, it’s okay. Nothing you haven’t seen before.” It jolts her and she knows he can feel it. _A joke._ He was _joking_ _with her_. She doesn’t face the wall again. Instead, she blurts out the first observation that strikes her.

“Your scar...it’s...gone...” It’s a question, tinged with curiosity and wonder.

“Oh...” He touches his shoulder where once she’d left her mark, hand sliding up to feel it gone from his face, as well. The skin soft, new, and unspoiled.

“You healed me.” The wonder is quiet, gentle, and she knows she’s watching the realization wash over him, just as it washes over her. “Why did you do it, Rey?” And she thinks the way he says her name is lovely. Too lovely to come from someone so fearsome. Yet, he doesn’t seem so right now. He’s all soft angles and wide eyes and she wonders what has changed since their sabers were locked. She’s afraid to guess. Afraid of falling again if she is wrong. But this feels different. _He_ feels different. And she knows the only way to get honest answers from him is to give them.

“I couldn’t let you die.”

He steps closer and she can count the freckles on his chest. The tunic is hanging loosely from his hand at his side. The fingers of his empty hand twitch and she can feel through the bond his wish to touch her. She almost allows it. Almost.

Rey steps away, wrapping one of the spare blankets around her shoulders and sitting on one of the stools by the fire. She pulls the blanket tighter around her, but the cold is coming from inside.

* * *

Ben tosses the tunic over his head, rolling the sleeves to quarter length. They would be too short on him anyway. His hair forms wet patches on his shoulders. It’s been a long time since he’s worn white.

He busies himself collecting his wet clothes from the floor; the Skywalker saber falls from them as he shakes them out, landing on the ground with a clicking thud. He knows Rey hears it, he can feel her tense when he picks it up.

He turns to her, holding the saber almost reverently between his long fingers. She is watching him now.

He extends the saber towards her, an offering. He can see her travel through many realms of emotion, each one only staying on her face a moment. Her voice is so quiet, tinged with shame and sorrow.

“I don’t want it.”

He sits down on the stool across from her.

“It’s _yours_ , Rey. You have to.”

“Have to.” She echoes. “Have to, have to, _have to._ ” Each repetition is more bitter than the last. “ _Why?_ Why do I _have to_? Is it because I’m the _last Jedi_ , because I’m the _last hope_.” She snaps again. “Well, I’m _not_. Not anymore. I’ve _failed_. I can _feel_ the dark calling me. I can feel it and now I know why. It’s in my blood. Dark in my own veins. I’m not the hero they want. They want someone _good and pure and strong_. But me? I can’t even resist my own temptations, how am I to resist my own _blood_. I was just a scavenger. A nobody from Jakku. But now...now I’m...I’m a _monster_.”

She’s crying again. Her walls have dissolved entirely, so he lets his fall too, quietly, unheralded. He sets the saber on the ground behind him and this time he doesn’t hesitate when he reaches for her hand.

She lets him. Her fingers are soft and warm, but her hands are shaking.

* * *

His hands are so large that they swallow hers entirely. She doesn’t know why she lets him, but she does because maybe her soul knows something she doesn’t. _A dyad in the Force. Two that are one._

“You’re not a monster, Rey.” And she knows he means it. “ _I was,_ maybe I still am. I had made my peace with it. But you...you made me not want to be one. ”

She realizes that he’s buried his defenses. She has full access to his mind, his emotions, and they all call to her. Call out her name.

_She sees them fighting back to back, she sees the first time their hands touched, she sees his hand reaching out to her, she sees him looking at her with the sea wild around them, her hand splayed on his stomach as her own life force bleeds into him, fading his scars and healing his wound. Then she sees him alone. He’s watching the gray horizon and she knows he’s watching her go. Another blink and she can see him draw back his arm, his precious saber clutched in his hand. He flings into the sea and she can’t help but gasp as it sinks. He looks almost surprised at what he’s done, but there isn’t a hint of regret. He looks so marvelously free._

“Blood is nothing. It’s about what you choose. I chose you, Rey...” She is drawn out of his mind and back into his eyes, intense, focused, sincere. His pupils are blown wide enough to hold a galaxy, it’s a galaxy she wouldn’t mind being offered.

But her doubt still has claws embedded in her bones.

“It isn’t me you wanted.” Her voice doesn’t pitch above a whisper. It may shatter if she tries. “You wanted a queen, a ruler, someone powerful and unmoving. Strong, like they wanted me to be. But that isn’t me. Underneath this new monster, I am still... _nothing._ ”

* * *

“Not to me.”

His own voice sounds so _certain_ and he knows it comes from a part of him that he’s tried so long to contain, to kill. A part that’s only ever spoken he truth. He releases her fingers, hands traveling to her face. Her lips are parted in wonder and her breath is already in his lungs. He can feel the dawn of her understanding, it breaks across the bond like a wave on the shore. _She knows. She knows why he followed_. He doesn’t care about heroes and Jedi and saviors, about Emperors and galaxies and wars. Rey is _here_ and she is _everything_.

When he closes the space between their lips it is his name he finds on her tongue. She tastes of stardust and rosehips and rain and when he pulls her close he hopes she can tell that he never means to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! I suppose it could stand alone where I've left it here, but we need the pure Ben/Rey first time smut that I'm gonna slap y'all with in the last chapter. 
> 
> Let me know if you liked it and check out my other works! Also still taking a few fic requests over on my tumblr at smirking solo if there's something specific you're craving. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I hope you enjoyed part one of And I Will Follow. There are two more parts planned for this short lil multi-chapter Reylo fic so subscribe for updates. :) May repost all as one long one shot once all three parts are posted! 
> 
> Rating will change once part three is posted because that's where the smut will be ;) 
> 
> Depending on the reception I may continue it through the end of TROS's events, but for now it is planned to span the brief time on Ahch-To with Ben playing a larger role in Rey's decision to face Palpatine, so Force Ghost Luke doesn't have to do all the heavy lifting...literally.


End file.
